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Monday, May 8, 2017

Google wants us to have more fun with our photos. That's why they give us a place to be the forever home for ALL your pictures. With Mother's Day coming up, they've given us a new toy! A Mother's Day movie made for you. All you have to do is:

Select a Mother. You should be seeing all of the People in your Google Photos library, if not, see prerequisites below. Find the face of your mother and click it. Then click Next.

Select Children. Click the face(s) of you and your siblings. Click Done.

That's it! You'll see a message "Creating Movie: This will take a few minutes. When it's ready, it will show up in your Photos Assistant." If you like it, click Save.

Google Photos finds pictures with both you and your mom in the same picture, then strings them together along with music. Here's what it did for me:

Prerequisites

In order for this to work you must be using Google Photos, be logged into your Google account, and have lots of pictures there. You must also have Face Groupings turned on. To check that, go to Google Photos and click the 3-line menu, then Settings. You should see an option for "Group Similar Faces" - make sure that is on. Once you turn it on, it can take a while to group the faces, be patient. If you don't see the option for grouping faces, you may be in a country where it is not supported.

Want More?

You can make additional Mother's Day movies by repeating the steps above. It doesn't have to be your mother. You can pick another mother (or even a father, or a teacher) as long as you have pictures of her and her kids in your photo library. You can even skip the 'Select a mother" part altogether and just use this to make movies of small groups of people. Select a Mother: click Skip. Select Children: select a few people who you expect to all be in some pictures together.

Want to Make Changes?

Google does all the work to create this movie, but if you want to change something, you can edit it just like a movie you created yourself. You can remove photos, you can add other photos, you can add video clips, you can rearrange them, and change the music. You need to be using Google Photos on a supported mobile device, then you open the movie and tap the pencil to edit it. What you see next will depend on whether you are using Android or iOS, but both of them allow you to make the changes mentioned above.

How to Give it to your Mother

The movie that is created is now a part of your Google Photos library. I like to upload mine to Youtube so it can be embedded on a web page - as I did above. You can also share it via email, Facebook, or other social media, but if you want something more solid, how about a digital photo frame? Most photo frames can display photos and videos from a USB 'thumb' drive. To get your movie to the thumb drive, plug it into a computer, then open the movie in Google photos, click the 3-dot menu and choose Download. Navigate to the drive letter for the thumb drive and Save.

Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.